8 English Art Terms You Should Know

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The words we use to talk about art can often seem opaque—and not just when they take the form of foreign languages like French and German. Yet this lexicon is an invaluable tool to have in your arsenal when thinking about and analyzing art. With roots in far-flung historical moments and art movements, the following eight English art terms will set you well on your way to discussing all kinds of art like a pro.

Canon (Canonical)

Differing little in spelling but significantly in meaning from its double-N homophone “cannon,” “canon” comes from the Greek word kanōn, meaning a measuring rod, rule, or model. The term was first used within the context of Christianity to refer to the faith’s accepted guidelines and, later, to official, church-decreed regulations. As early as the fourth century A.D., the parts of the Bible that were considered to be the word of God were deemed to be of the canon, or canonical.

Over time, the concept of a canon expanded to a wide range of fields, from literature, film, and music to philosophy and even geography. Today, it generally refers to the established works, individuals, or theories that form the historical backbone of a particular discipline or genre. Spanning from antiquity through the contemporary era, canonized artworks are generally privileged in art history courses, museum exhibitions, and other art world institutions—venerated as exemplars of the movements they represent, and of art historical progression.

The canon has received its fair share of criticism for prioritizing Western art created by white males, with scholarly efforts emerging at the end of the 20th century to critically assess and broaden it. In addition to the overarching art historical canon, individual artistic movements or national traditions may be said to have their own canons.

Painterly

“Painterly” art is characterized by visible brushstrokes that evidence the hand of the artist and call attention to the nature of the artwork—in other words, to its paintingness. Painterly work is looser and less tightly controlled, contrasting with linear work, which is defined by discrete outlines and borders, as well as smooth, inconspicuous paint application. Linear painting took center stage during the Renaissance, when an interest in creating the illusion of three-dimensional space flourished—though Venetians Titian and ​Jacopo Tintoretto, among others, also celebrated a painterly technique with expressive, unpolished brushstrokes.

In the centuries that followed, artists who advanced a painterly approach proliferated, from Baroque painters like Peter Paul Rubens, to Impressionists like ​Pierre-Auguste Renoir and ​Berthe Morisot, to Post-Impressionist Vincent van Gogh.

“Painterly” need not apply only to paintings; it can also describe elements of works in other mediums that suggest a painted quality. In photography, for example, such works abounded in the 19th-century ​Pictorialist movement, whose practitioners aimed to elevate the status of their fledgling medium by making their images resemble paintings through atmospheric colors, hazy forms, and surface brush marks.

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